SugarCoated
by A Sweet Catastrophe
Summary: A oneshot about when L was young and almost made his first official friend.


_**Author's Note: **Amazing, the stuff you find on your computer sometimes. I apologize if it's not very good but, hey, it's my first post here that's not rated M._

_The setting, while maybe a tad ambiguous, is one of Watari's orphanages where L (and maybe a few others) are also being trained. Age-wise, I'd say he's 12-14 ish. You decide._

--

Sugar-Coated

He languidly pressed his back against the brick, ivy-clad building, bent his legs so that they rested under his chin, and placed his hands on his knees as he looked out into the empty courtyard. It was some time around seven thirty in the evening, he was sure, basing his conclusion on the time of year and the fact that it was getting dark but every blade of grass was still conspicuous before his eyes, even if they did cast long shadows creating crisscross patterns over the playing fields. It was peaceful, seeing the fields vacant of children. While they were all playing their little games inside, he could sit outside and think clearly. Not that he would expect to be allowed to participate in such games anyway. No one ever disturbed him, even though truthfully, deep down, he wanted to be disturbed. He wanted someone to want to talk to him. He wanted a . . .

"Hi," a voice said to his right. Without moving his head he concluded that the person was female, around his age, and a bit quiet but friendly. The voice startled him and his whole body gave a dramatic, involuntary twitch. A shocked noise came from the unseen girl. He was sure he had made her wonder if she shouldn't have said anything. She probably would take it as an immediate dismissal, considering that's how the large majority of the kids who had actually talked to him reacted. He listened closely, expecting to hear the ground bunching beneath her shoes as she walked away, but it was silent.

Cautiously, he lifted his head to look and see if there was actually someone standing next to him. Just as he had thought, there was a girl about his age. She had hair a little bit lighter than his raven-black hair and it was tangled and shabby, like she had never used a brush or had a proper haircut. Her eyes were dark green with indigo circles underneath them and partially obscured by her hair, which fell haphazardly over her right eye so it was barely visible, especially since it was getting darker outside. She was wearing a dark-blue skirt that fell a bit past her knees and a gray zippered sweatshirt, unzipped halfway to reveal a plain blue T-shirt underneath. Her skirt was badly frayed on the bottom, by wear not fashion, making him think that she had gotten the skirt when she was small enough for it to lightly graze the ground and that she just hadn't gotten rid of it despite her obvious change in height. Her hands were in her pockets, clearly fingering something that made a crinkling noise when she touched it.

"Hello," he said, almost inquisitively. He couldn't figure out what she wanted from him. She must want something; no one has ever felt the need to address him for any other reason. He could be sitting in her spot, even though he had been sitting there every day at the same time for as long as he could remember. But people can be very territorial, claiming land for themselves even though it belongs to no one.

The girl's apprehensive look faded into a warm but slightly awkward smile. He wasn't positive but for a second she had looked scared, of a rejection or dismissal possibly? Interesting.

"What are you doing?" she asked genuinely curious and sincere, glancing in the direction that he had been facing even though he wasn't really looking at anything; he had just been allowing his mind to wander.

"Just thinking," he answered, his thumb pressed against his lips. She gave a nod and he could see her hands moving around inside her sweatshirt pockets again.

"Do you mind if I . . . join you?" she asked, swaying back a forth a bit like she was anxious or unstable on her own feet. He nodded quickly, hoping she would sit down so she wouldn't fall over. Without removing her hands from her pockets, the girl slowly lowered herself down next to him and folded her legs so she was sitting Indian-style. It was then that he felt her foot brush against his and realized that she wasn't wearing shoes either. It wasn't exactly uncommon for some of the kids to not wear shoes if they wanted, girls just seemed to be more picky about not touching the ground with their bare feet.

"Do you want some cookies?" she asked smiling.

"Yes," he replied with a bit more enthusiasm than he was expecting. He never said no to sugary foods.

Almost in the blink of an eye, the girl's right hand sprang from her pocket and dropped a clear, plastic bag of miniature sandwich cookies in between them and then shot back into her pocket. He had caught a long enough glimpse at her hand to see that there was nothing strange about it that would require hiding. He looked from her to the cookies, wondering if she was offering him the entire bag. To be safe, he took out only one and popped it into his mouth to see her reaction. She just smiled.

"I took some extra ones after dessert," she explained. "I always get hungry later, especially for snacks."

"These are my favorites," he told her. "Don't you want some?" he asked, wondering if she would be as weird about taking her hands out of her pockets to eat.

"Yeah, sure," she said, taking out a cookie. Even though he had been expecting her to toss it in her mouth and hide her hands, she did something closer to the antithesis of that. She opted to instead, dissect the cookie by taking one cookie in each hand and slowly twisting them apart so all the cream came off on one side. Then she leisurely licked off the cream, making sure that the cream stayed the same height on every surface of the cookie. He couldn't stop watching how intricate her actions were. As her little, pink tongue ran over the cream, every lick seemed planned. Then she ate the cookies, starting with the one she had just finished removing the cream from. She chewed the last cookie in her mouth as her hands slowly retreated back to her pockets. After the thorough analysis of her hands he became impatient trying to find reason behind concealing them. He gave in and asked her.

"After they got me to quit sucking my thumb when I was younger, I started biting my nails. I think I always have to be doing something with my hands. A lot of people find it distracting when I do things like take apart pens and put them back together while I'm talking to them so I try to keep my hands away from things I can mess with."

"I don't see how there's anything wrong with that." he said to her as he took the bag of cookies and emptied them all out into his hand. He laid the bag down on the ground and flattened it to use as a base to keep the food from getting grimy.

"How come you are always alone?" she asked him as he started to build a pyramid on the bag using the cookies as bricks. He simply shrugged his shoulders.

"How come you want to talk to me?" he retorted. "I'd say you're more suspicious here."

A hint of red flushed over her cheeks and she ducked her head down so she was staring at her folded legs. Her hands went through her hair and raked it in front of her face to hide her blushing, even though he had already seen it and been in awe of it.

"You always were alone. I thought you might like someone to talk to. I know I always did." she said, digging her feet into the dirt until her toes were buried.

From the top of the completed monument, he took the cookie that was acting as the very tip between his thumb and forefinger and held it out to her. She looked up and smiled, taking the cookie from him and eating it in the same way she had done with the other one. He then took quite a few of the cookies from the already dwindling tower and stuffed them into his mouth, filling the insides of his cheeks as he chewed. She laughed.

"It's too bad this will never happen again." she murmured, taking her hand out of her pocket to trace designs in the dirt on her feet. He perked up.

"Why not?" he asked, eating another cookie and lapping up the crumbs on his fingers.

"I'm leaving here tonight," she said sadly. "There are too many kids here so some have to be transferred. My roommates don't like me because I'm by myself a lot. I don't sleep much because they used to do mean things to me while I was asleep. I don't even know if I can continue working towards the same goals as the other kids." She sighed faintly as her finger started to draw elaborate swirls and patterns around her feet and eventually working over to where he was seated. "I think I am going to study biology. Maybe I'll become a doctor so I could still help people, just in a different way. Either way, when they needed people to transfer, I was probably at the top of the list. I have nothing keeping me here."

I guess I'm not enough of a reason, he thought to himself. I shouldn't take it harshly or personally. In fact, I really don't. I just met her. I only thought that maybe she could become my first friend. Why couldn't she have talked to me earlier?

He couldn't think of what to tell her. He didn't have much of a choice, did he? He couldn't work his way out of this.

He picked up the last cookie and held it out to her. She wiped her dirty finger on the sleeve of her sweatshirt and took the cookie, roughly separating it into two halves and giving him the cookie with more cream on it.

They ate in silence, occasionally glancing at each other through the corners of their eyes trying to imprint some tangible memory of their brief time together. Suddenly, the noise of a car pulling up sliced through the quiet, causing them both to look up.

"That's my ride." she said gloomily, as she swung her legs around so that she was sitting side-saddle with the ground and closer to him. She stared at him, straight in the eye, and he started to feel like he didn't have any control, a feeling he both hated immensely and was uneasily thrilled by. Without warning, she leaned in towards him and kissed him. Her lips were damp and tasted like chocolate, very much like his own mouth. Too astonished and clueless to react, he sat perfectly still, his eyes open and watching her.

When she pulled away, she was grinning, trying to stifle a laugh that his stunned facial reaction was causing.

"Goodbye, boy with no name." she said coyly, now kneeing in the dirt in front of him.

"Good . . . bye," he choked out.

She stood up and dusted off her shirt and her knees which were so covered in dirt, that only a shower would get them completely clean. She then picked up the bag that had been holding the cookies and stuck it back in her pocket along with her hands.

As she walked away towards the driveway where other kids were waiting, he could hear the faint scrunching of the bag inside her pocket and the rusty engine of the car that would take her away.

It was then that it dawned upon him that he had never asked for her name.


End file.
